Monday, July 25, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Stars Between Us by Cristin Terrill

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 2, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.     


The Stars Between Us is a romantic young adult science fiction novel by author Cristin Terrill.  The book takes a pretty classic romantic premises - girl from a lower class background, scrambling to survive who is surprisingly given the chance to thrive in an upper class city with wealth and fortune - and marries it to one twist (the rich boy she's supposed to marry dies immediately) and to a science fiction setting (with the upper and lower classes on separate planets.  Add in an underground resistance movement and well there's certainly plenty that could be done here with the setup of The Stars Between Us.

Unfortunately, The Stars Between Us doesn't really take this setup in any particular interesting direction, with its characters and plotline going in pretty standard directions.  The characters are fine, as the book splits its narrative after the first act into a two protagonist SF romance, but the romance never really did too much for me, and the mystery the book presents to keep throwing difficulties in its protagonists' paths is laughably obvious.  And well the book's dealings with class, revolt, and the powers and dangers of money are paper thin and rarely delved into as deeply as one would hope.  The result is a book that's inoffensive, but not really that interesting at its core.  

-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Vika Hale is tired from her life.  She works everyday as a barmaid to support her family on the poor planet of Philomenus, dealing with the drunks at her job and her bitter sister and mother at home, with only memories of when her father's career was prosperous enough to get her a satisfactory education to keep her warm.  And there seems no hope of anything changing in the future or her life getting better in any way.  

And then she gets the strangest news of all: an eccentric billionaire, who had apparently once arranged for medical tests of her as a child, has willed that his only son and heir must marry HER of all people, in order to claim his wealth.  And so it seems Vika will get away, to the wealthy planet of Ploutos, at the cost of an arranged marriage she never wanted.  

But when things continue to go as Vika could never have predicted and said potential husband is killed before he even lands on the planet, she winds up with wealth on Ploutos without the marriage she so dreaded.  But Vika's newfound wealth may only be temporary unless she can find a wealthy new husband to actually call her own......and if she can survive the strange incidents which seem to suggest that her potential husband's death may not have been an accident.  

And then there's the mysterious stranger Sky Foster, who keeps poking his head around Vika's life...a man who Vika is both irritated by and potentially interested in, but whom has none of the wealth she needs to get away from the life she hated.....
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The Stars Between Us has a pretty classical setting: poor young woman from a lower class neighborhood finds herself by happenstance in a rich upper class neighborhood - here a planet - and wants to do anything to stay there, with her initial entry into that society being by marriage.  Of course here there's a number of things that are different: the initial marriage never happens due to the potential husband's death, there's someone clearly after her wealth (as hinted by occasional pages told from the unnamed antagonist's point of view), and she finds herself desperately searching for a new arranged marriage to continue her prosperity in perpetuity.   Still, if you heard of this setup and thought "I bet she falls in love with someone who doesn't have wealth instead of what she planned", well you'll be completely unsurprised because of course that does happen here.  

What throws things for a loop here at least a little bit is well Vika's and her eventual love interest Sky's personalities (Sky becomes a second point of view protagonist after the book's first act, when his secret is revealed to the reader but not Vika).  Vika isn't some ideal heroine like many characters are in her type of position: she's tired from being the good supportive daughter, especially with her mother and sister being bitter and unsupportive, and so when she gets the chance at wealth, she barely even thinks about trying to send money back to support them.  She's selfish and spoiled to a certain extent, especially when she first comes into that newfound wealth, as you'd expect from a teen who just got out of poverty miraculously.  But as things go on, and she realizes she cares for the elderly couple who are now supporting her, and she sees how superficial the upper class is around her, well she begins to turn back in somewhat to the unselfish girl she once was, and act to try and help them and support them...and to solve the mystery of who might be behind the attacks upon them.  Sky meanwhile is someone who falls head over heels for Vika from the beginning* but finds her cold and distrustful towards him...and so he finds himself caught trying to be helpful to her and to honor her wishes for him not to be around...a struggle that drives him nuts, especially with the secret he can't dare tell her.  

*The book tries to hide that Sky could become a love interest at least through the first act, but the publisher plot summary gives it away, so I'm not hiding it here either, even as I'll hide his more major secret.*

Still while Vika and Sky are solid characters, especially with Sky's secret dilemma that I won't spoil here, the plot around them and the attempt at tackling themes is just entirely ho-hum (as is their romance, which is pretty meh in terms of chemistry honestly).  The story attempts a mystery with its real antagonist, who gets occasional point of view pages here and there of him acting mysterious and menacing, whose identity will be obvious after the first act (in which Sky is eliminated from a possibility) by the lack of any other potential characters who could be suspects, making the eventual reveal kind of underwhelming....especially as the antagonist's motives are extremely underdeveloped and basically only revealed at the end.  Other side characters who aren't Vika, Sky and the elderly couple who take Vika in are paper thin, even characters you'd think would merit more discussion - for example Vika's mother is treated by everyone as like this awful person not worth a thought and the book never really gives any justification for that; the same with Vika's sister who is just sort of treated like an extraneous person not worth a mention who shouldn't dare be bitter for her own poor lifestyle because she wasn't working like Vika was.  

And well, the book kind of has a bunch of themes about class that it kind of wants to talk about....and yet doesn't really know how to deal with.  So we have Sky realizing the issues with the world of poverty he didn't grow up in and a group of revolutionaries who want to fight for a better system....who do absolutely nothing.  You have one of the elderly guardians become kind of ruined by his greed and the book takes a "you can't just assume money corrupts, it can do good" approach at the end it doesn't really earn.  And then the book just assumes that the protagonists, who now are secure with a ton of money, are able to just drop that money exactly where it needs to improve things for a better world.  It's pretty much a fairy-tale-esque ending that really doesn't fit the themes dealt with here.  

And so while there's nothing absolutely wrong with The Stars Between Us, it just doesn't do anything particularly well enough to stand out or even just exist as an example of a well executed new version of old classic tropes.  It's just kind of blah, and well, while it won't make anyone angry, it doesn't give any reason to recommend it either.  

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